


A Formal Review

by 23Murasaki



Series: (re)Written!Verse [14]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: A Truly Ungodly Amount of Headcanons Oops, Content Warning: Mentions of Wesley and also Gross Incompetence, Council Politics, Gen, IDK what else I can tag honestly, Paperwork, Watchers, Watchers' Council (BtVS), casual discussion of death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-04
Updated: 2018-04-04
Packaged: 2019-04-18 05:29:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14206095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/23Murasaki/pseuds/23Murasaki
Summary: He's not technically fired (yet) so he's not technically being replaced (yet), but the point is much the same. They're sending Roger Wyndam-Pryce's brat of a son to run Giles out of his newfound home. At least the paperwork got to Sunnydale before he did.(Or: Giles gets a file on Wesley, annotated by a comparatively-helpful representative of the Council, and the author has strong opinions about why the Council is rather terrible.)





	A Formal Review

The letter from the Council was surprisingly heavy. For a brief moment Rupert wondered if the Council was erring on the side of caution or even kindness; there had seemed to be a modicum of empathy in Travers's voice after the disaster that had been Buffy's Cruciamentum, and it had been their own fault that Gwendolyn Post had gotten as far as she had...

But no, none of that. Closer examination indicated that the envelope had been opened and resealed. Had someone intercepted it along the way? Well, discretion was the better part of valor. He opened the thing with gloves on and dumped the contents out onto his desk.

_R. Giles,_ ran a letter on plain paper, in familiar crabby handwriting. Gods bless Dr. Spears, he thought, whether or not she would ever get his name right again.

_Have intercepted this posting en route. Contents appeared, in my view, insufficiently detailed following the matter of G. Post, fmrly Lake. Have appended contextual information and further documentation._

_Ask about review. There is a formal process which will be observed in word; may as well in deed._

_Good luck._

_M. Spears_

Yes, that sounded about par the course, for Spears as well as the Council-writ-large. Spears had, allegedly, been a field agent herself decades prior, so she was more likely to understand... well, there were many things she was more likely than the Council's leading bureaucrats to understand. He'd seen her file once, years ago. It had been full of black ink and redactions. (He'd seen inside her office once too, when he'd come back to the Council with the Mark of Eyghon on his arm and his tail between his legs. She'd let him sit there in silence for an hour and yell at her about the unfairness of the world for another hour. It had seemed fitting that she took a name as payment; since that day she'd only ever called him _Ripper_.)

Next to read was the actual letter from the Council, signed by Travers himself, which did not say anything new besides the name of his chosen replacement. (It wasn't phrased quite like that, of course, they couldn't phrase it quite like that, but the point was the same. A stranger, hand-picked, sent to mete out punishment for the heinous crime of caring for his charge.) _Wesley Wyndam-Pryce_. Giles grimaced just reading it. That was what they were sending to replace him, to take his job and his role and his calling and his Slayer? Roger Wyndam-Pryce's little brat of a son? (That was what they were sending to take his children away from him? No, no he wouldn't allow that. Replaced or not, he wasn't leaving, not for the Council, not for the Dreamers' City, and certainly not for Roger sodding Wyndam-Pryce.)

He knew Roger Wyndam-Pryce by reputation more than anything, but what he knew he disliked on a fundamental level. Any relative of his was more likely than not more of the same, the sort of straight-laced arrogance that had led Roger Wyndam-Pryce to push for Rupert's elimination from the Council. It hadn't been phrased exactly as such, no, that would have been too clear a power-grab, but the timing of the articles detailing the long-term effects of the abuse of black magic and demon summoning had left their true purpose very clear. The true purpose of this move was murkier, but probably equally conniving.

Well, that was probably what the file was for, or at least Spears's annotations thereof, so he turned his attention to it. There were photographs—one meant to go with the file (a prim-looking young man wearing an expensive suit and a blank expression) another two probably supplied by the good Dr. Spears (portrait of the Watcher as a schoolboy, flustered and looking off-camera with his Head Boy badge on crooked; Roger, the schoolboy, and a woman Giles didn't know but who looked so much like his chosen replacement that she had to be his mother, Roger glaring into the camera while mother and son stare at the ground)—and documentation of work (a posting at archives, not much else) and an academic record (stellar, admittedly, with a focus on translation and ancient languages). Transcripts and archives work, really. The dates indicated he was barely out of training at all.

(Sending an overbred schoolboy to a Hellmouth, that was exactly peak Council nonsense, Ripper thought. Like a Cruciamentum, like sending students to face a Lorophage demon alone, like shipping a magic-addicted sorcerer clear across the world to Watch a Slayer who shouldn't have been called to begin with, that was how the Council proved its worthlessness—he bit down on the rage and tried to focus.)

There was another envelope from Spears paperclipped to the briefing from archives, so he opened that. Another photo (this one a candid shot, a few of the archives workers talking together, a red-haired woman he thought was named Delancey blowing a kiss at the camera, Roger Wyndam-Pryce's son off to the side, bent over his books), a letter of reference (brief, impersonal, Hodgkins misspelled the boy's name but noted his aptitude for pictographic languages), and another note in Spears's hand.

_Received no further references. Unlikely to be missed, some would say._

He read on. There were some attachments to the transcript, at least, detailing tests that had gotten Roger Wyndam-Pryce's son his field clearance. They read (nightmarish) standard, locked doors, training sessions, allegedly controlled circumstances, a group of students armed to the teeth and woefully unprepared. Spears had left a smattering of annotations that indicated the boy, while not wholly unable to swing a stake was, in fact, wholly unable to aim it. ( _Intervention was required_ , noted the logbook. _Intervention herein meaning heavily armed strike team_ , wrote Spears.)

Giles threw the file down on his desk and sighed. What exactly was the Council playing at? (Besides nepotism and incompetence, maybe.) A spy? A power play by Wyndam-Pryce the elder? One thing was certain, no one could possibly expect his schoolboy replacement to be successful.

And wouldn't that look good on paper, he thought suddenly—"Ripper" Giles run amok again, a dead Watcher from a rival family, two Slayers gone rogue on a Hellmouth, a renegade Kalderash witch running a coven, and schoolchildren playing with chaos magic and tapping into the Dreamers' City. Wouldn't that look good enough to drag down Fairweather House once and for all? All Roger Wyndam-Pryce would have to do was sacrifice a pawn...

( _Unlikely to be missed, some would say._ )

He didn't really think he could call up much sympathy (or empathy, really) for the blank-faced young Watcher in the photograph, the man who was supposed to take his job and everything that came with it, or for the spawn of Roger Wyndam-Pryce, but he could muster a bit of pity for a poor fool about to walk to his likely death on the Council's orders and incomplete information. That much he could do.

(So long as the aforementioned fool didn't take too much after his father. Giles's pity didn't extend to arrogant incompetent blowhards.)

**Author's Note:**

> Heyyy, guess who's due to show in (re)Written soon! And by "soon" I mean in the next sidefic and the next chapter! That's right: one arrogant incompetent blowhard! Kidding, kidding, I promise to do more-or-less right by Wesley...


End file.
